MOONWOOD

Toronto psychedelic space-rock jam band MOONWOOD have been playing as a quartet since 2013 (husband and wife team Jakob Rehlinger, guitar/synths, and Jacqueline Noire, vocals/synths, backed by Matthew Fava, bass, and Luca Capone, drums). Their live shows consist of a few songs with standard verse/chorus structures, but also at least one extended mind-expanding and face-melting improvised jam. Though they’ve released some of these instrumental freak-outs on live mixtapes, “Cosmic Ghosts” is their first attempt to capture one of these singular experiences in the studio. Nine months pregnant with their baby, Jacqueline’s water actually broke while recording her overdubs for the track. Once her synth parts were duly completed, they called the midwife.

STARGOON

Named after an imaginary paint colour created by a neural network (it’s the same banal beige featured on the cassette’s J-card), STARGOON began as a collaboration between ambient droner Heraclitus Akimbo (aka sound archivist at theMechanical Forest Sound blog, Joe Strutt) and Moonwood drummer, Luca Capone (who also records sound-collages as Radio Samson di Maria). On this 20-minute track, cobbled together from an hour’s worth of improvisations, they’re joined by Moonwood guitarist Jakob Rehlinger on bass who also recorded the session. Like the name STARGOON itself, “Bylfgoam Glosd” is taken from Janelle Shane’s AI’s list of paint names.

Active since 2006,HEAVY MOON is the instrumental space fuzz rock solo jam of Jakob Rehlinger, guitarist of psychedelic space-rockers MOONWOOD. On every #MoonMonday leading up to this release, Rehlinger has uploaded each of the previous six Heavy Moon albums to the Heavy Moon Bandcamp site.

This seventh Heavy Moon album is a collection of cosmic instrumental space rocks stolen from the planets Hawkwind, Floyd and Harmonia.

“Like Moon Duo hopped up on pure wormwood extract, the Toronto-based improv space-rock outfit known as Moonwood have plucked another full-length jewel from the ether. Drawing on a cornucopia of worldly throwback psychedelic influences from the Middle East, Asia and Germany, Desert Ghosts is a relentless assault on your psyche, bound to blow your consciousness out the back of your skull and into a kaleidoscope of interdimensional possibilities. …. The first half of Desert Ghosts is noted as ‘Earthbound desert rock,’ a voyage through the deserts of the American West with fuzz rock and cosmic surf grounded by motorik rhythms, and the second half is a Trans Arrakis Express suite, signifying the arrival on the fictional desert planet from Frank Herbert’s famed 1965 sci-fi novel Dune. The change in sound is audible; the first half propelled by frontman Jakob Rehlinger’s incendiary guitar and Luca Capone’s impertinent drums, while the second half is more meditative and mystical, featuring more of bassist Matt Fava’s violin. Both sides are united by filtered synth drones and Jacqueline Noire’s mesmerizing vocals.” ~ Exclaim!

In preparation for their numerous live shows this week, Moonwood spent the weekend (Sept. 28-29, 2013) rehearsing. Out of that, 128.5 minutes of music got recorded. They captured a few slow-burning versions of their current improvised arrangements for “Trans Lunar Express” and “Trans Martian Express” as well as an in-progress piece with the working title “Surf The Casbah“. Also a completely new, completely improvised, probably never to be played again, 20-minute post-punk tinged tune called “I Went Walking“. Patience rewards with deep droning freak-out culminations.